


Crystal Fragments

by avi17



Category: The Dark Crystal (1982), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (TV)
Genre: 100-500 words apiece, Chapter titles are the prompts they were written for, Drabble Collection, F/F, F/M, Gen, Little Bit of Everything, M/M, Some gen and some shippy, Though I may not bother to post the shortest ones, Warnings will be posted by chapter if needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:35:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 53
Words: 17,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26709106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avi17/pseuds/avi17
Summary: Thra is the sum of its people- their joys and sorrows, their loves and their losses.  All are part of the Song.A collection of drabbles written for weekly writing sessions.
Relationships: Brea & Seladon & Tavra (Dark Crystal), Deet/Rian (Dark Crystal), Gurjin/Seladon (Dark Crystal), Onica/Tavra (Dark Crystal), skekGra/urGoh (Dark Crystal)
Comments: 32
Kudos: 43





	1. "Next Best Thing"- Rian and co.

**Author's Note:**

> Figured that people outside the server might actually want to read these XD I swear I have a real WIP with real chapters still in progress >.>
> 
> Chapters for this will be titled with the prompt and characters/ship.

The gelfling resistance bed down in what remains of Stone-in-the-wood- of Rian’s former home. The atmosphere is rowdy and celebratory- after all, they did the impossible. Cellars are raided, drinks poured, songs sung by members of disparate clans now arm-in-arm.

Rian participates in none of it. All he can seem to do is stare at the spot where Deet disappeared into the trees, the black withering of the plants where she had passed. They are counting on him to be a leader, to step up as he had in the fires to bring them all here, but he can’t seem to feel anything but numb. _Alone._ This victory is only temporary. They stand on the brink of open war, and he doesn’t think he can take one more loss.

Sometime after the fires die and the raucous noise subsides, Brea silently takes him by the hand and leads him back.

There are far more gelfling camped here than the village was built for, so many have pulled blankets and cushions into Maudra Fara’s spacious throne room. It feels cramped, yet somehow empty and wrong without her powerful presence. In one corner he finds his friends- Gurjin and Naia in a pile of tangled dreadlocks, Kylan curled into Naia’s other side. A few feet away, as though she doesn’t quite feel she belongs yet- Seladon. Settling beside her sister, Brea pats the remaining open space.

It has been many trine since he was small enough to sleep curled up with his family like this- he had been moved into the guards’ barracks the moment he’d mastered his basic drills. For the first time, it occurs to him that perhaps he has spent too much of his life with a blade in his hand. But they will have to reach the other side of this before he can lay it down for good.

The body heat on either side of him is warm and comforting, enough to crack the cold shell that has settled around his heart. He remembers sleeping in the crook of his father’s arm, feeling its strength and longing to be just as strong one day. Remembers his mother’s fingers in his hair, the hum of a lullaby. Remembers the way Mira’s body used to fit perfectly wrapped in his. 

Mumbling sleepily, Gurjin slings an arm over his waist, and Brea’s foot brushes reassuringly against his. They aren’t his family- his family is gone- but…

 _Well,_ he supposes, _they are now._

Even encircled by their love, he feels the absence of Deet- the absence of the future he had dared imagine for them- like a knife. Brea’s hand finds his hair just the way he remembers, and she says nothing as he finally allows himself to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	2. "Acceptance"- skekGra/urGoh

“I don’t think we have long.”   
  
SkekGra isn’t sure why he says it- at the least it’s a mood-killer. The night around them is beautiful, teeming with life that only emerges after dark, the sky shimmering as the breeze kicks up the crystal sand. He sits curled into urGoh’s side, withered fingers tangled loosely in his hair, counting the stars that lie between them and a home he doesn’t remember.

“I-if we don’t re-form, I mean,” he clarifies pointlessly. But it’s been so long since they sent the gelfling on their way, and the war still sits at a stalemate. Their goal is no further away, yet no closer.

UrGoh pulls away enough to meet his eyes. “Is that…...okay?” It’s a loaded question, and one skekGra has to think on for a moment. They have striven for reunification for four hundred trine- many more than most creatures of Thra are given. Their time may run out before they succeed, slipping through their fingers like the sand around them.  _ Can you accept that we may fail _ , urGoh is asking him. He has never taken failure well.

But in the end, the answer is easy.

“As long as I’m with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	3. "Ordinary Life"- Seladon, Mayrin

Her mother finds her giggling with a pair of dark-haired peasant girls in a great pile of hay- circlet askew, straw poking through her braids. She doesn't make a scene in front of them, merely offers a curt _"Come, Seladon,"_ but the moment they're back in the carriage, she fixes her daughter with a stony glare.

" _How_ many times must I tell you?" She hisses. "You are to conduct yourself with _dignity_ in front of our subjects."

Seladon bites her lip, defiant. Her wings will open in a few trine- she's _far_ too old to cry over something like this. "I just wanted to have some _fun_ for once!" It comes out sounding whiny and childish, but it is simply the truth. The other children had begged her to join their game, and for once, she had.

"I brought you with me to learn to be a proper princess, to begin to understand your responsibilities," her mother replies, infuriatingly calm. "Not to have fun."

"What if I don't want to be a princess?" Seladon bursts out, already horrified with herself but somehow unable to stop. "I didn't ask to be your daughter and have all these- these responsibilities and rules and-" She cuts herself off, tears of frustration welling despite her efforts to contain them. "...I just want a normal life."

She expects her mother to explode in return, but instead she softens, reaches out to place her hand over Seladon's own. "...I know. Better than you realize. None of us ask for this." She sighs, and Seladon wonders for a moment if her mother will allow the touch to become a dreamfast- allow her to see the experiences that her mother has kept locked away, the ones that turned her from an uncertain child herself into someone _ready_ to lead an entire race. But the hand pulls away, and her expression shifts back into its default- warm, yet distant. "You will understand someday."

It isn't the first time Seladon has heard that, and she suspects it won't be the last. She can only hope it's true. 

For now, they finish the carriage ride in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	4. "Open Your Eyes"- Rek'yr

After the blow, he floats, the Song shimmering gently around him. He must be dead- after all, he had invited it with open arms. His only regret is that his comrade had not also kept her silence, but he forgives her- she was young, afraid. She survived.

A voice comes- no, a thousand voices layered into one- and he rejoices.  _ Thra. _ But the words are not those he expects.

_ “Rek’yr……..open your eyes.” _ It thrums, breathes life back into him. _ “You have more to do.” _

Someone is shaking him. Someone real.

He blinks back to consciousness, squinting against the harsh desert sun, when suddenly a shadow looms over him. A great, towering stone creature, and a little podling, looking far less queasy and more determined than he remembers. That flat face cracks into a grin, and he extends a hand.

“Hup go to fight! Together?”

Rek’yr smiles, and takes it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	5. "Rescue"- Gurjin, Naia

There is no time to talk in the castle- they creep in dead silence until the moment they can run. Gurjin hangs between her and Kylan, half-conscious dead weight, but somehow- impossibly- they make it. Naia keeps her mind devoid of any thought or worry beyond hoping that Kylan can keep up, until they finally plunge deep enough into the trees to safely stop.

The moment they do, Gurjin’s knees buckle so quickly they barely manage to catch him.

She finds the wounds later, after Kylan has started a fire and begun boiling a tea with every healing or strengthening herb he can think of. She prods, devoid of shyness or modesty with one she has known since birth, then strips away the layers of armor and fabric. When she pushes aside the messy mass of his hair, she sucks in a gasp.

“Wha-” 

Gurjin laughs weakly. At least he’s aware enough to laugh, even if the sound of it makes her want to scream or cry. They haven’t seen each other in nearly a full trine- this is not the reunion she had pictured. “......Tell you...later…” he manages. With another chuckle that deteriorates into a cough, he murmurs, “........Was...worth…..it.”

The punctures are uglier than she’s ever seen from an animal, and already beginning to darken and fester from neglect. They will have to work quickly to arrest the decay, and to get him strong enough to jump back into the fray. But for now, she wraps her arms around him gingerly, cheek pressed into his hair, holding him the way their mother used to hold them. Her whisper is low, comforting, but with an undercurrent of deadly anger.

  
“They will _pay._ I swear.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	6. "Discretion"- skekGra, skekTek

SkekGra hisses as skekTek smears some kind of pungent, stinging ointment across the nasty gash in his stomach. He’s called the Scientist rather than the Doctor for a reason- his interests lie more in poking wounds and studying their infection rate than stitching them up- but he’s the best they’ve got. Especially since he’d refused to let on to skekUng- who is at least a competent battlefield medic- how bad it really was.

“What sort of weapon caused this wound?” SkekGra knows it’s not small talk- he’s not the sort- but he still hesitates.

“Gruenak knife. They’ve-” he grits his teeth at the first jab of the needle, “got little barbs on the blade.” When skekTek raises a brow- surely wondering how such a creature had gotten close enough with a knife, he’s no fool- skekGra avoids his eye. “I was...distracted.”

He has no intention of mentioning  _ what _ distracted him- a strange creature, a pair of soft, tired eyes, fixed on his from across the battlefield- before they had clouded with pain at the moment when skekGra’s flesh tore.  _ Why had that happened? _

“You will tell no one of this, got it?” he hisses, grasping the Scientist’s wrist hard enough to remind him which of them is stronger, despite their currently reversed positions.

“O-of course, my lord Conqueror,” skekTek agrees meekly, fumbling for the dropped needle and thread and returning silently to work.

SkekGra still doesn’t quite believe him, but at least he’s not skekSil (and at least he’d managed to avoid that one’s prying eyes on the way in). But by the feast tonight, the pain will be dulled enough to walk straight and hide it, and the others will never have to know of his moment of failure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	7. "Hearts and Minds"- Seladon, Brea

Gelfling do not mark graves. Podling do, Seladon had learned upon actually getting to know one- they considered their dead to be seeds returned to the soil, and planted true seeds above them, to continue the cycle of their lives. But once Gelfling return to the song, the place does not matter- they are everywhere, in the plants and rivers and mountains, breathed in the wind, alive in the hearts of those who loved them.

They sit in the arms of the Cradle Tree- two sisters, titles long set aside, and a little bundle with white-gold hair. Seladon presses one of the babe’s tiny hands to a gnarled knot in the trunk, and Brea lays her hand over theirs. They close their eyes, let the familiar comfort of the song wash over them, before the voices find them. They are ephemeral, wordless, but no less recognizable. As it turns out, a body turned to ash returns to the song just the same, and Seladon pushes down the inevitable rush of shame.  _ “No more apologies,” _ Brea had said.  _ “Show it with how you live.” _

The baby giggles, transfixed, and Seladon lets out a wet laugh.

“Tavra...Mother….this is my daughter.”


	8. "Wondrous"- Rian/Deet

He finds Deet and the base of the cliff long after the others have gone to sleep, cross-legged in the glittering sand. She smiles when he sits beside her, the same little smile he had seen across the circle, grateful that the darkness hid the color in his cheeks.

“Look at this!” she says, gesturing to a patch of little pink and red flowers peeking through the sand. “It’s incredible that they’ve managed to survive out here. And they feel...clean, somehow?” She brushes a petal, gently enough to not damage it. “The Darkening hasn’t reached them yet.”

They would look lovely twined in her hair- a thought that comes to him with an odd mix of tenderness and guilt- but it would be wrong to pluck something pure and healthy, especially when everything else seems to be starting to decay around them. It will make her happier to leave them whole.

“...They’re beautiful,” he says. It is almost what he means.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	9. "Crown of Madness"- Dark Heart, SaSan

Every day, he feels a spike of fruitless hope-  **_finally_ ** _ a response _ \- before he remembers that it’s merely the echo of his own mournful voice.

_ No one is listening. No one cares they’re gone. It may be that no one even remembers. _

SaSan approaches him on the seashore- he should have expected her, her aura lapping comfortably against his like the waves beneath him. She seems more at home here than he could ever be.

_ “I worry for you.” _ Her voice touches his mind softly, requesting entry. For the first time, he denies her.  _ “I hear the pain in your song from even far across the oceans. But there is beauty to be found in this world.” _ A pause.  _ “Perhaps more than the one we left.” _

_ “What would you have me do?” _ he retorts, corona flaring with white-hot anger.  _ “Give up, as you have?” _

She does not answer- merely studies him.  _ “I see something new in you. Growing.” _

He knows what she means to say. He can see it in his reflection in the silver waves, in the metal they’ve taught the Gelfling to wear on their bodies, in the great Crystal itself.

_ Darkness. _

She reaches out to him once more, her aura warm and golden.  _ Content. _ When he closes himself off again in disgust, she leaves him to his grief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	10. "Comfort"- Brea, Kylan

They stop for the night in a clearing near what had been Sami Thicket, bedding down to the distant bellows of the landstriders set loose by its destruction. Brea expects to find Kylan amongst the ruined houses- perhaps looking for his own- but instead she finds him standing before a gnarled tree far from the outskirts, studying weathered, old words carved into the trunk.   
  
“Whose names are those?” she asks softly, so as not to startle him.

He jumps anyways, but softens at the sight of her face. “My parents. This is the last place I ever saw them.” She should have guessed- there is love in the way he traces each letter, too low to have been put there by an adult. “No one believed me. I just wanted them not to be forgotten before I could find out if what I remembered was real.”

_ The Hunter. _ He has told her, but she still shivers at the memory of his claws around her throat.   
  
“...I believe you.” It’s a silly thing to say now that they’ve seen him in the flesh, but the look on Kylan’s face tells her that he needed to hear it all the same. She reaches hesitantly to touch the letters herself- hoping she isn’t overstepping- when an idea comes. “We...we could sing for them, if you wanted. The way you did for my mother.” She knows this pain. Having watched the Hunter crumble to ash does nothing to bring them back. She turns back to him. “It’s never too late. They deserve to be laid to rest with the truth.”

For a moment, his mouth hangs open, and she worries she’s said something terribly wrong. But then he’s pulling her into an embrace with more strength than she thought him capable. She strokes his hair, and kindly says nothing of the crack in his voice or the wetness against her shoulder.

“...I...I’d like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	11. "Warmth"- Tavra/Onica

She's supposed to be buying a dress, Tavra reminds herself for the fifth time that afternoon. For Seladon's birthday, she'd been angling that her old ones still looked like childling's clothes- though why she had chosen to ask it of the sister who had been in armor since her wings had opened is beyond Tavra. But the racks of silks and tulles all look the same to her, and all she can manage to think about is how beautiful Onica looks with her fiery hair crowned with snow.

It's a miracle her Elder has let her out for a day, but one that Tavra will gladly take full advantage of. The massive fur coat Tavra has lent her all but engulfs her small frame as she comes walking back, carefully holding two steaming cups of mulled wine. 

Tavra takes one gratefully, momentarily transfixed by a snowflake that drifts down to land on a freckle on the end of Onica's nose.  _ Not now. Concentrate. _

"Maybe we should ask the shopkeeper for help," she sighs, taking a welcome sip of the spiced liquid and feeling the warmth spread all the way to her fingertips. "I'm the worst person for this. Mother's seamstress told me once that I wouldn't know a pleat from a pintuck." She laughs. "And she was  _ absolutely _ right."

Onica raises an eyebrow over her own wine cup. "I can't claim to be an expert either, you know." Her lips curl into the little smile Tavra loves, tinged with just enough mischief to plausibly deny if caught. "But then again, I also can't pretend to be terribly interested in buying your sister a dress."

Grabbing Tavra's hand, she pulls her just behind the rack of gowns, and Tavra realizes that they are entirely hidden from the midday crowds by the fluffy skirts. She returns Onica's smirk even wider. 

The kiss tastes of spiced wine, but warms her far more.    
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	12. "Hammer and Nail"- skekGra/urGoh

Their lives are often separate in the daytime, buried in their own projects with too great a fervor for casual conversation. But neither of them are skekTek or urTih, lost to their work for weeks- they always reconvene in the evening, the day’s grime washed away, curled up with their blankets and smoke and the warmth of their pleasantly sore bodies. Often, there is little progress to be discussed- the construction of their ‘messenger’ is particularly frustratingly slow- but today urGoh deposits a small figure into skekGra’s hands, his dark face beaming with pride.

“It’s me,” the Heretic says stupidly, because of course it is, but it’s such a perfect likeness that it still makes him gasp softly. At least, he supposes it is- it has been nearly two hundred trine since he last looked into anything more reflective than a pool of water. This is how  _ urGoh  _ sees him, and somehow that is even more wondrous. There are more tiny carven wrinkles than he might have expected, less hair, but the curl of the tiny hands fascinates him, and the determined set of the little beak.

If this is what urGoh sees, then that is what matters.

“Why no nail?” he asks, suddenly noticing the absence.

“It’s…..you..” urGoh says, as if the answer is obvious. He reaches up, traces the jutting thing gently enough not to hurt them. “What they did…..is not…….you.”

That much is certainly true. The piece of metal is an intruder into everything he does, everything he thinks, everything he is. The bastards chose their parting gift well- his punishment is to never forget his betrayal, as they certainly have not. Every shooting pain, every moment his vision blurs and focuses, they are reminders that they still  _ own him. _   
  
But as he looks from the little puppet to its maker, traces each curve of a body that he knows as well as his own because it  _ is _ his own, he smiles. They will never understand why he did it, why he chose to allow them to maim him rather than falter on his convictions even an inch. They will never know how it feels to be  _ whole _ , even for a moment- why it was  _ worth it. _   
  
“It’s _ perfect. _ ”   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (So today I found out that the new Bestiary book claims that the nail is something skekGra did himself and is basically completely meaningless. This was my spite offering to show how many fucks I give about that XD)
> 
> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	13. "Take It or Leave It"- skekTek, skekEkt

“Again, again!” the Ornamentalist shrieks, raising their baton threateningly.

Huddled together in fear, the group of podlings again begin to sing, the music discordant and mournful. SkekTek simply observes- he has no ear for music, and even less appreciation for it. He watches mainly for skekEkt’s reaction- they nod along through the beginning, looking satisfied enough, but a few moments after the song splits into parts, they’re throwing their baton down in the anticipated dramatic fit.

“No, no, _no_ ! Scientist, this simply will _not_ do! I told you, we _must_ have the low D, and they still cannot reach it!”

SkekTek resists the urge to roll his eyes. “As I have repeatedly explained,” he begins, attempting to use small words, “there is simply no way for the vocal folds of a podling to reach such a frequency, even with my _modifications_ . This will _have_ to do, unless you would like to employ a larger creature. A Gruenak, perhaps…?”

The Ornamentalist shudders. “Oh, _no_ , those clods would butcher my beautiful work!” They lean closer, voice saccharine. “ _Surely_ our genius Scientist can create a baritone? I only require one!”

….Damn his widely-known weakness to flattery. He spots a burlier podling on the end, shuddering a bit at what he’ll have to do it, but curiosity already blooming to see if he _can._ “...Alright. I will _try_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never been able to decide between he and she for skekEkt, since there are different sources at odds with each other, so I just went with they.
> 
> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	14. "No One Knows"- Gurjin

_Recognition._ It had mattered to him once, more than he ever cared to let on. To be seen as a soldier, a maudra’s son- not a clown, not a foolish follower dragged into trouble by friends he can’t seem to refuse. Not to hear his name as a throwaway with nothing to distinguish it.

So much has changed.

He and Naia can navigate the swamps better than anyone, and that ends up being his downfall- the Garthim catch him patrolling alone, hours from the others- more at once than he’s ever seen. They have none of the Skeksis’ qualms about the water, legs scuttling through the muck and tearing up thick roots. He runs, but catches himself- he’ll be overwhelmed without help, but if he leads his pursuers to where the rest of the Resistance is hiding, that may be the end of all of them.

 _Rebel against your planet’s overlords_ , _they said_ , he thinks wryly. _It’ll be fun, they’d said._   
  
Maybe it hadn’t been fun, but it was _right._

He makes a split-second choice and takes off the other direction, deeper into the swamps, towards the treacherous spots where the mud gives way to quicksand, and away from any help that might come to him.

They’re fast, pincers already snapping at his heels, and he knows there is no scenario where he sees his friends again. But he’ll be _damned_ if they manage to drag him back to the castle to be drained into a husk. If this succeeds, no one will know. They will search for him and find nothing, but the Garthim will not find _them_ either, or make it back to their masters- and that’s what matters.

He remembers the touch of his sister’s hand, a hundred embraces. Remembers the day Rian named him _bold_.

That will be enough to sustain him to the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -ducks- Pls don't throw things at me
> 
> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	15. "Full Circle"- Jen

Three suns align in blinding, terrible light, and the chamber of the Crystal freezes. Jen freezes too, hands shaking with grief-  _ does it even matter if he succeeds if she’s gone _ \- when the song of Thra crescendos and a gelfling sits atop the crystal with him. ...No, not a living gelfling, a  _ shade _ \- ethereal, wavering- one who looks like….

...Like  _ him _ .

_ “I tried,” _ its voice echoes in Jen’s mind, warm and sad.  _ “I failed, and we lost so much.” _ Their eyes meet, and he understands.  _ “But you’re going to do it.” _

Jen nods to his father, and fulfils his destiny.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said I wasn't gonna post any of the 100 word ones, but whatever, I like this one XD (at one point I actually cared about word limits...)
> 
> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	16. "Out of Breath"- Gurjin, Naia

“N-Naia!” Gurjin huffs. “Will you- just hang on a sec, alright?”

She laughs from her perch among the low branches, somehow twice as nimble as him even with her wings not yet broken through. “Why should I? It’s not my fault you’re as slow as an old nebrie. You can’t always lag behind just because you were born after me!”

“And you can’t always lord that over me, it was  _ three minutes _ !” he retorts, still breathing hard. She will, though, and there’s something comforting in that. She’s been too tired and irritable to tease him much lately, now that Mother has begun training her in earnest to take over as Maudra someday. It’s strange to imagine Naia- rough-and-tumble Naia, all sharp edges and dirty feet- as a calm, wise maudra like their mother. The process will be long.

He wonders what will become of him once she no longer has time to be his constant companion. Things are changing so fast. 

Her giggle echoes above his head, and she calls, “You know if you stand in that spot too long, you’ll sink.”

He looks down, realizing too late that she’s right and watching his toes disappear beneath the muck.

“...Great.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	17. "Waves"- Brea, Seladon

“I don’t think I can bear to see it,” Seladon whispers when they’re still a few hours’ walk away. Brea nods and squeezes her hand.

“Me neither,” she whispers, but they keep walking anyway.

They had known Ha’rar was the next place the Skeksis would strike. That’s why they had sent frantic pleas to evacuate the city, by windsifter and landstrider and every other method they could think of. It’s impossible to know if the eerie emptiness is because their efforts succeeded, or because the Skeksis have once again filled their dungeons and their bellies.

Either way, at least there are no bodies amongst the wreckage.

The others fan out to search, but Brea and Seladon walk the long, straight road to the palace they once called home. It is a shell of broken glass and crumbled stone, treacherous enough that Brea opens her wings to lift her feet off the ground and glides silently to the living quarters that had been theirs what feels like a lifetime ago.

She had despised them once, the high, pale walls feeling like an empty prison compared with the cluttered vastness of the library. To see it truly empty hits her in a way she had not expected. The grief comes in waves, lapping at her feet one moment like the sea against the Sifan coast, then bowling her over the next, when she sees Tavra’s first blade somehow still mounted on the cracked wall. She catches a glint beneath the debris on the floor, and bends to find a jeweled comb- the teeth warped and bent, several stones missing, barely recognizable. She knows it anyways, from hours of their mother wrestling it through their hair while they squirmed and kicked and complained. They hadn’t appreciated those hours then.

She doesn’t realize she is holding back tears until one drops onto the back of her hand.

Crunching footsteps echo behind her, and then Seladon kneels beside her. Her face echoes everything Brea feels as she runs her fingers over the twisted teeth. She sniffles, and it seems to open a floodgate, allowing them to cling to each other and weep- for their family, for innocent days lost to time and war, for the trine they spent resenting each other rather than being sisters.

They remain there until long after the sun has set on their former home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	18. "Talisman"- skekGra/urGoh

“ _ UrGoooh _ !” skekGra crows the moment he walks in the door, dropping his bags from this most recent supply run in a heap on the floor. “Get out here, I brought you a present!”

UrGoh’s head pokes curiously through the curtains, followed by the rest of his lumbering body as he makes his way down the ramp. “....Really…...now…..?” SkekGra catches the playful tone in his voice, and the moment they’re within arms’ reach they’re touching, nuzzling, re-familiarizing after an agonizing three entire days apart. He nearly forgets about anything else, but no, it’s  _ too _ good. He extricates himself from urGoh’s arms.

“Wait, wait, in a minute.” He reaches into a hidden pocket of his robes and pulls out a pendant- polished sandstone and crystal, carved with a symbol of some sort, strung on a narrow braid of leather. He begins to braid the cord into urGoh’s hair, while urGoh turns the little thing over in his hand, thumb curiously tracing the carving.

“It’s…...beautiful…..” he murmurs. “What….does it……….mean?”

SkekGra snorts. “The writing? Not a clue, but the Dousan woman I bought some of these dyes from was  _ very _ insistent I take it.” He’s struggling to keep a straight face now. “Apparently it’s a charm meant to ward off evil spirits and energies? She was  _ extremely _ concerned that I would be passing so close to the Circle of the Suns.”

UrGoh blinks as it hits him, then starts to laugh- a giggle at first, then great deep belly laughs, joined by skekGra’s shrieking cackles that must surely have contributed to that myth in the first place. When they can finally breathe, urGoh admires the glint of it dangling in his mane. “I…..like….it.” He reaches up to bump skekGra’s beak with his nose. “As long…..as…..it doesn’t……..ward  _ you _ off.”

SkekGra lets out a noise of mock-indignation. “Are you calling me  _ evil _ ?” But he nips at urGoh’s jaw affectionately, breathing in the scent of him. It smells like home. “Don’t worry, you can’t get rid of me that easily.”

UrGoh lets out another chuckle, pulls him closer, and the talking ceases.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	19. "Heartless"- urSu

The word sticks with him, many trine after it is thrown at him by a furious, near-begging Skeksis. He would think little of anything said by their crueler halves, but urGoh had not disputed it, instead simply meeting his eyes in silent, sad resignation.

They had left the next day- the last time urSu would see them. He had grieved, as he grieved any loss among their own, but had considered his choice the right one.

Now, with a tiny creature curled into his mane like a blanket, he isn’t so certain.

He still doesn’t know what compelled him to step in, but it is the first time he truly  _ sees _ what they have allowed this world to come to. And when he picks the child up, he feels the pricklings of something new in his chest. Protectiveness, tenderness. Another word, perhaps, that he had also ignored when urGoh spoke it so long ago. Can they truly call themselves benevolent or compassionate without this? If they merely do no harm, detached and dispassionate, but also do nothing in the face of harm?

For the first time, he understands that they cannot.

He only regrets that he realized it too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	20. "Obstruction"- skekMal, urVa

The scent of blood in the air sets his heart pounding, the echo of his quarry’s pained whimpers as it flees on a fractured leg only building anticipation for the kill. He nearly has it within his grasp when an arrow whizzes by close enough to graze his skeletal mask.

“Enough,” comes that deep, familiar,  _ loathed _ voice. UrVa is the only creature skekMal has ever met who does not fear him even the smallest bit, and that produces a unique hatred in him. “I thought you reserved your energy for worthy prey, skekMal. Surely you are above running down such an injured creature.” SkekMal growls with a menace he knows to be worthless here.

“You will not stop the hunt!” he snarls. UrVa merely faces him impassively, voice steady as a great, rooted tree.

“I already have.”

The bastard is right- the pitiful thing has already whimpered off into the woods to lick its wounds, and skekMal already finds himself too disgusted- and if he is honest with himself, tired- to continue the pursuit. Fine. Let urVa think he has done a good deed today.

The hunt will resume once it can run properly again- and taste all the sweeter when it ends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	21. "Spare the Dying"- Rian/Deet

She eluded him for so long, but she’s easy to find now- curled in the center of a crater of her own making, a thirty foot radius of rot and decay all around her. She radiates exhaustion even as energy crackles around her, rooted to this spot like another of the blackened trees.

She’s taken too much,  _ suffered _ too much to spare the suffering of others. He can’t let this be the end for her.

She deserves to see a world as kind as the one she had once believed in.

“Deet,” he whispers, an echo of the tenderness that had been stolen from them. He nearly reaches to touch her face- but no, not yet. He can see in her eyes that the end is near- she’s too tired to run, or even cringe away to protect him as she once had.

“Ri……..an…….” It’s barely audible, but it’s enough to pull the knot in his chest tighter, and to reaffirm that his choice is right.

“Take my hands,” he murmurs, reaching. Even the air around her burns his palms. “This is destroying you. Let me take it from you.” A breath, and a question hanging between them. “ _ Please. _ ”

“......But…..” He can see how difficult it is for her to even form words now, and in a way he knows he’s taking the choice away from her, the same way his father had from him so many trine ago. It may be that this is his family’s destiny, but if so, it’s one he can be proud of. There will be love waiting for him within the Song.

“Take my hands,” he says again. It’s a comfort to know hers will be the last thing he feels. He has missed them. “I’ll be fine.”

It’s a lie, but one he hopes she can forgive in her memories of him someday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	22. "Finish"- skekGra, urGoh

SkekGra sets down his chisel, for what he fervently hopes is the final time. It feels as though their home has been covered in powdery rock dust for a hundred trine, though really it’s only been about a quarter of that. They would have had far less trouble creating a creature meant to stay in one piece, but that would be too obvious, too easy to discover by one too foolish to hear their message. That cannot happen- it must be the right one.

“Ready?” he asks. Dusting off all four of his hands, urGoh nods.

Gingerly, skekGra sets the little disc that holds their carefully crafted magic onto the pile of carven stones. For a moment, nothing. UrGoh lets out a deep, encouraging hum, the kind that seems to vibrate the walls despite its softness, and finally the stones begin to rise, hover,  _ connect _ . Two grind against each other, and skekGra fears they will shatter and explode again- like the one memorable failure that had taken days to clean up. But no, they are stacking together as they should- into an arm, a leg, the facsimile of a face- until something stands before them that can only be called a  _ being. _

It turns towards them, and the mouth of its featureless face opens curiously.  _ Recognition? _

SkekGra lets out an undignified squawk of excitement, hears urGoh’s relieved laughter. The creature takes a tentative step towards them- wobbling like a landstrider calf, yes, but walking- and leans its head toward skekGra. He lifts a hand to press against the hard snout.  _ No violent reaction, good.  _ “That’s right...you are Lore.” They’d chosen the name so long ago he’d nearly forgotten it. “And we are your- your creators.”

He knows what he almost said. It is a word he will never be able to call himself, not as they are. Only creatures of Thra can create new creatures upon its surface- they learned long ago that their incomplete bodies cannot, no matter how they attempt to twine them back together. But skekGra has never created anything beyond the puppets urGoh taught him to make, and certainly never anything that could move or offer him a little cock of the head that seems to suggest intelligence, _ feeling _ . He had only known how to destroy for so long. Perhaps the feeling welling up in his chest is something like the way a gelfling feels when they look upon their own little creations.

He supposes he will never know.

The pride at having completed one more step in fulfilling their purpose will have to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	23. "Bonfire Night"- skekNa, skekTek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween! This week we did spoopy prompts :D

At first, skekNa is too absorbed in the task at hand to catch the footsteps behind him. He adjusts his leather mask with the clean part of his hand, attempting not to inhale the bundle of herbs stuffed into the end. He often doesn’t bother with it- he’s used to gore and worse- but these have been left in a back room for too long and the stench is atrocious. He tosses another one onto the pile, wiping the unpleasant sliminess on his robes, then turns to face the intruder.

“Slave-Master!” skekTek exclaims too brightly- not as oily as the Chamberlain might be when he wants something, but still with an air of falseness that skekNa doesn’t have time for tonight.

“Scientist,” he replies curtly, reaching back into his cart for another bundle.

“Wait, wait!” There it is. The Scientist doesn’t quite grab his arm, but makes a motion to block him from the pile. “Surely you don’t plan to burn them _all_ .”   
  
SkekNa rolls his eyes. “Yes, I do. The smell has made it to the banquet hall and the Emperor made it _abundantly_ clear that I needed to do something about it immediately.”

The Scientist makes a noise of commiseration, but still glances to the cart hopefully. “Surely one kept in my lab would be less offensive than-” he surveys the heap, “-a full dozen. I have need of a few organs, and there’s hardly any sense in killing one still in working shape for them.”

A snort. “That’s the first time you’ve ever said that. Thra knows that not a single one I send to your repulsive workshop ever comes out.” Still, he leaves the final bundle in the cart- it had been the top of the pile, so it’s at least the freshest. It is thankfully mostly hidden by a burlap sack- he barely likes looking at the creatures while they’re alive- but its little feet sticking out the opening belie any attempt to think of it as merely cargo. He taps the side of the cart pointedly and sighs. “Fine, one.”

He lowers the torch to the heap of bodies, and one by one they go up in flames, painting the trees around them with an eerie orange glow. He’s grateful for the mask as the Scientist covers his beak with his voluminous sleeve- the smell of burning podling flesh and charred hair is nearly as offensive as the odor of their slow decay. They watch in silence for several long minutes- if nothing else, to make sure the burn does not spread. The Scientist clicks his tongue pensively. 

“SkekGra has told us something of the customs of these creatures.” SkekNa rolls his eyes again. Only skekGra would actually find such things worthy of study. “The composition of their bodies is very similar to plant matter, so they bury their dead with seeds and allow their decomposition to serve as fertilizer for the surrounding flora.” A pause. “I am certain they would find this quite contradictory to their biological cycle.”

SkekNa lets out a harsh cackle at that. “It would hardly be worthwhile to concern myself with their feelings _now._ ”

This many losses will leave the castle short-staffed, and that won’t do. He will have to contact some of his operatives tomorrow for fresh recruits. Hopefully the next batch will last longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	24. "Ghosts and Ghouls"- urGoh, gelfling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween! This week we did spoopy prompts :D

“This forest is haunted,” a gelfling whispers to urGoh one night around the Resistance’s campfire. The one beside her- urGoh hasn’t quite learned their names yet, they only arrived this morning- elbows her in the ribs.

“Not this again,” he groans, eyes rolling. “We’re not childlings anymore, I thought you’d grow out of believing that stuff.”

“But I saw it!” she insists, waving around her spoon as though she’s forgotten the bowl of stew in her lap. “Just this…. _ shape _ between the trees, sniffing around like it was...looking for something.” She lets her spoon fall, drops to a hissing whisper. “I looked away and then it was gone when I looked back, but….I swear, there was  _ something  _ there.”

“Those rumors were about the Hunter,” a voice urGoh knows interjects- Rian, sounding tired. “And we watched him die.” He already looks so much older than the eager young warrior who had walked in their door only a few trine earlier. “We have enough to fear without stories. Get some sleep.” 

He walks away, but the first gelfling does not look convinced. “Well, I know that,” she murmurs. “But isn’t that what  _ haunted _ means?”

UrGoh, who has at times seen the barest shimmer of a familiar figure perched on the ledge outside his former home, says nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	25. "Kiss"- Tavra/Onica

She’s packing a crate of blankets when the tent flap opens. She already knows who it will be- Tavra had promised to check on her before her first voyage since the storm. She’s been pushing down memories of that terror all day, but something about Tavra’s mere presence relaxes her- it feels like warmth, like safety. She’s in her simple training garb, sleeves rolled up and hair mussed, and Onica tries not to smile at her too widely and make a complete fool of herself.

“All ready?” she asks, and Onica can hear the worried tremble in her voice, as well as how hard she’s trying to steady it. She swallows.

“Just about.” She sets the lid on the crate, and then there’s nothing between them but air that seems to freeze with anticipation. For a long moment, they say nothing.

Far-dreamers cannot see everything, and Onica surprises even herself when she leans in to press their lips together.

Tavra’s face turns a charming pink as she sputters wordlessly, and it’s nearly impossible not to kiss her again, even as her mind reminds her that _ yes, you just did that. _

“We sail with the tide,” she says, picking up the crate, well aware of the burning of her own face. It might be a bit on the nose to wink- and she’s already reached her limit of daring today- but she allows herself one more glance back, and one more hopeful little smile. “I’ll be back soon.”

They’ll talk then. But for now, she has a little spark of that warmth and safety to carry with her out on the lonely sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	26. "Potential"- Ordon, Rian

"Father, look!" Rian's excited little voice pipes up as he waves his hands at what remains of the straw training dummy. It’s been all but disemboweled by his wooden training sword, hay spilling onto the ground like dry, prickly entrails, neck hanging by threads.

The equivalent in a living being would be gruesome. Little Rian is so proud. Ordon should be too, but something about it makes him uneasy.

He has been a soldier all his life, and when he had pictured having a son, he had always imagined a little warrior, a small copy of himself. It seems that is what he got- and at this rate, Rian may turn out to be twice the fighter he ever was. But he has seen enough battle to picture it raging around his son, and it brings a pit of fear deep in his stomach that he has never felt before. The Stonewood melt down their weapons after battle in the hope that they will never need them again. And suddenly he understands that better than he ever has. He finds himself hoping that Rian will never need these skills at all.

But Ordon also understands that this is not the world they live in. They will need the blades again, and someday, Rian will have to fight. He will have to force down any protective instincts and prepare him.

He does not embrace his son, nor give him the effusive praise he wishes he could. He merely hangs another dummy, and taps the target on its chest. “Good. Now do it again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	27. "Beacon"- Gurjin

They see it even beneath the thick canopy of the Great Smerth- the blue glow slicing through the sky, then spreading to their own cookfire. Naia’s eyes flash in the strange light as Gurjin turns to her, her wary face echoing his own. 

“What’s happening?” she asks, a hand on the hilt of her knife, as though she expects a Skeksis to leap from the flames. In fairness, it wouldn’t be the strangest thing they’ve seen since this all began. Still, he inches closer, curious.

“I don’t know. Maybe we just burned the wrong pla-” he cuts off, not because of how foolish a possibility that had been, but because he hears….something. Something building beyond the normal crackling and spitting of the fire. Voices, whispering over one another in an indiscernible hiss, building louder and louder. He fears he’s imagining it until he catches Naia’s face again- a picture of shock- and then-

_ Rian. _

A wave of relief crashes over him. _ Rian is alive. _ Their orders to spread their message to the opposite corners of Thra had come from Mother Aughra herself, but that hadn’t made breaking his promise to follow his friend wherever he had to go any easier. He knows that he isn’t the greatest warrior to ever live- hardly comparable to Captain Ordon, though all his renowned skill had not saved him in the end. Perhaps not even a match for his own sister. He doesn’t know yet what trials Rian has faced since they parted, nor whether he could have been of any help, but he would never have been able to forgive himself if something horrible had befallen him that he could have perhaps prevented.

_ But it hasn’t. Not yet. _

He can see their faces now, barely discernible within the flames- Brea’s too, and an older Vapra who can only be her sister- and takes a deep breath. He feels Naia’s familiar presence as she sits beside him, and bursts his way into the magical conversation the only way he knows how.

“Bold Gurjin is here too, in case you were wondering!”

They had known the call would come. And he plans to be the first one back to Rian’s side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	28. "Hidden Away"- Jen, Kira, ???

They feel their way into the caves with no small amount of trepidation- despite the joy of discovering they are not truly the last, it still feels as though the survival of the gelfling rests on them, and it would be all too easy to descend too deep into the winding tunnels and never resurface. Kira’s fingers dig into his arm as she clings-  _ odd _ , Jen thinks to himself. She’s usually the more courageous of the two of them, and it’s dark, but not _ that  _ dark.

It crosses his mind that perhaps he can simply see better, but there is little time to wonder why that might be.

It strikes Jen that perhaps these caves were once beautiful, before the life had been drained away from them. They are still vast, the stone draped in organic, somehow graceful shapes, echoing the dripping sound of water dripping into underground pools. The walls are scattered with tiny patches of glowing moss, tentatively growing again since the restoration of the crystal, and he thinks that someday, with time and care, they could be beautiful again.

But still, they find no one.

Until the final day, when their food is running low and their spirits lower. Kira sings to pass the time, her strong voice echoing through the hollow chambers- until suddenly Jen shushes her, listening.

“Is that…”

_ Footsteps _ .

The gelfling that emerge look like no gelfling Jen has seen before- skin the grey-green of stone and moss, eyes as deep and black as the pools around them. They clearly belong to this place. Kira lets out a gasp beside him.

The eldest of them steps forward, lines etched deep into his face, one eye clouded. He blinks.

“....Rian?”

Any greeting he had planned freezes on Jen’s lips.  _ His father. _ He knows the name, passed down by other gelfling they have found in their search, but little else. Before he can answer, the Grottan shakes his head, muttering to himself.   
  
“No, no, quite impossible. Been fifty trine since he ran off with my sister, and the Stonewood were wiped out…” He looks up at Jen again, the wariness of many trine spent in hiding mixing with the confusion of age. “Who are you? What has happened on the surface?”

_ Sister _ . Something clicks for Jen then, and he suddenly understands why he can see down here, why he has felt an odd sense of comfort underground even as Kira has remained anxious and agitated. And something else, a feeling like the one that had overcome him the first time he’d seen Kira, something he had never quite found amongst the mystics no matter how much he had loved them.  _ Family. _

“I’m Jen.” There is much to tell about the surface and about himself- how they healed the crystal, how he spent his entire life feeling so utterly alone, only to find that he wasn’t the only one after all. It can all wait. “I...I think I might be your nephew.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	29. "Secret Garden"- skekGra/urGoh

_ “UrGoh! _ Come look at this!” skekGra’s voice comes shrieking from the other room.

It takes at least five minutes for him to actually make it over there- but in his defense, the herb he’s been burning all morning was particularly potent, and the subtle pattern woven into the curtains around his loft was very distracting. He finds skekGra hunched over a crate,oddly damp and covered by a blanket he’s peeled back to reveal the contents. He peeks in to find...mushrooms.

“.....Mushrooms?” he asks obviously. SkekGra rolls his eyes.

“Yes, mushrooms! This has been here for weeks, didn’t you notice?”

UrGoh did, but he shakes his head, mostly just to hear skekGra’s tea kettle noise of irritated despair.

“The Dousan claim that this one induces sleep,” skekGra plows on ahead, pointing at a ruffly red one, growing in small clusters. “But I wouldn’t try it, they were a bit, uhhh, vague on how long the sleep would be.” A pause. “I just liked how they looked, they may or may not be of any use.”

He falters a bit, and urGoh realizes he’s looking for approval, almost like a childling with their first painting. It’s sweet. But more than that- he realizes as his once-murderous half tenderly smooths the soil- it is significant to see a creature once so devoted to death choosing to nurture life, no matter how small. The changes in him have gone far deeper than the surface, farther than merely abstaining from violence. It was always in him- urGoh had known it far longer than he had- but it also confirms for him that nothing is hopeless. No one is hopeless.

He’s been quiet for too long, and skekGra’s face falls a bit. “UrGoh? I can get rid of them if they bother you.” UrGoh shakes his head and chuckles, not bothering to hide a tender smile. .

“I…..like them. Can I…...help?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bestiary says that one of skekGra's hobbies is cultivating mushrooms XD this is the only part of skekGra's bestiary bio that I accept >.>
> 
> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	30. "Revenge"- Seladon

She wanders away from the embraces and raucous celebration after a time- the joy and relief are infectious, but every time a jubilant voice calls her All-Maudra, she struggles not to recoil in disgust. She doesn’t deserve that title, and the thought of how it came to her fills her with self-loathing. 

_How could she have been so blind?_

This victory may belong to all gelfling, but it is not hers.

She is so lost in her own thoughts that she nearly trips over the strange obstacle in her path- a heap of heavy fabrics, bits of leather- and the ugly metal armor of a skeksis. She bends to gingerly flip the overturned helm lying beside it, and the disgust flares up in full force when she recognizes it.

_“Then you are no more!”_

_Him._

There is a cruel satisfaction in at least knowing that her mother’s murderer is dead- if he can even be called that. He swung the blade and spilled her blood onto the cold marble floor of the palace, but the blame still lies with her and she knows it. She had been so desperate for attention and validation that she had brought ruin to everything she loved.

At least one of her mother’s killers is dead, then. That will have to do. The other will have to find a way to keep living.

Without even consciously deciding to do so, she swings her foot in a vicious kick, sending the helm flying in a cloud of ashy dust, and lets out a hoarse, anguished scream. There are tears welling up again before she can hold them back, but it’s strangely cathartic all the same- the antithesis to all her worship, all her emulation. An echo of the humiliation when they tore it all away from her, even if the General isn’t alive to feel it as he deserves to. She sinks onto a log beside the remains of one she had called Lord, the tears flowing freely now, but her heart strangely lighter.

The past behind her is ashes now- like her mother, yes, but like the pathetic heap of dirt at her feet as well. There is nothing she can do to change it. But she can leave it behind and move forward.

Someday, she can be worthy of the title.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	31. "Loyalty"- skekGra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still alive dammit xD

_ They are a threat to our rule,  _ the Emperor had said, in the especially silky voice he used when discussing anything distasteful.  **_My_ ** _ rule _ , he had not said, but skekGra hears it regardless. It has grown clearer as the trine have passed that any semblance of camaraderie between his own kind is only an illusion. 

_ You know what you must do.  _

He does, but in the moment, he finds himself hesitating. The gruenak squirming and whimpering beneath his grip on its throat is pathetic, despite the bizarre strength that nearly manages to throw him off.  _ Distasteful _ is an apt description for this- there is none of the exhilaration there once was, nor any sense of righteous achievement. Just blind, hollow obedience, to a cause of benevolent supremacy that grows less benevolent by the day- supremacy supported by nothing beyond that they themselves decreed it was so. 

But if he tosses that all aside, what else does he have?

The question gives him pause, but in the end, he isn't quite ready to find out. 

He slits the creature's throat mechanically, watching without passion as its twitching stills and dark blood soaks into his gloves. He does not smile. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	32. "Ink"- Seladon, Brea

"Brea!" Seladon calls, irritation plain in her young voice. "Where are you now?"

She can already hear the lecture- how could she lose her toddling sister in the massive library again? It's absurd- she's hardly even old enough to read, but she's enthralled by the colors and pictures and the smell of the old paper. 

Seladon really doesn't have time to keep looking for her like this.

She finds no Brea- only a desk scattered with parchment and an open bottle of ink. Brea has gotten into the Librarian's things again- childish drawings, handprints, and splatters have covered what were once neatly organized notes, and she knows they'll be hearing about that later too.

Struck by a sudden possibility, she draws aside the curtain behind the desk, and finds a little ball of gossamer hair and chubby limbs. There's ink everywhere- smeared across her face, dyeing her tiny hands black, even on the ends of her hair where she'd leaned too far over it. There's a flash of anger- they'll both be in trouble for sure, even though Seladon didn't  _ do _ anything. She never does- she tries to follow each rule to the letter- but everything seems to fall back on her anyways just because she's the oldest, the heir, the  _ responsible _ one. 

It isn't fair. 

But then Brea smiles brightly at her- not only in pride at her "work" but looking so sincerely happy to see her- and the anger melts away. Seladon gently takes her hand, feeling the slimy dark ink smear onto her own, and pulls her to her unsteady feet. She sighs. 

"Come on, let's get you cleaned up."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	33. "Humility" and "Gratitude"- skekGra, urGoh

The part of exile skekGra had never expected was feeling like a helpless childling. It was one thing to relearn how to stand and walk and function with a metal spike through his brain, but even once he had, he found a thousand little things that he had no idea how to do. Tasks as simple as washing clothes, cooking anything but meat over a spit, drying and grinding grain. He is a ball of hair-trigger frustration- swearing and lashing out at the most banal irritations.

“The rest of Thra…..does these things….without slaves,” urGoh had once responded evenly. “So……..can you.”

SkekGra had stewed in those words for days, before he’d thrown enough breakable objects at the wall to process that urGoh was right.

He learns patience as the trine pass, and domesticity grows oddly comfortable. His swords, which had once brought him the bloodshed and notoriety he craved, are tucked in a corner, wrapped and hidden away. He doesn’t need that to sustain him now that urGoh is here to fill the emptiness, bickering as they hang blankets off the edge of their balcony, distracting each other hopelessly as they attempt to cook.

After a time, he allows himself to forget them.

They curl up together, skekGra’s chin on urGoh’s shoulder, bellies full of food they made from ingredients they grew. This is a life no one would sing songs of, and skekGra thinks he likes it that way. Just the two of them, as much a part of Thra as they ever could be. He breathes in the smell of herbal smoke and smiles.

_ “Thank you.” _

UrGoh, to his credit, does not ask what for- merely strokes skekGra’s callused palm and murmurs  _ “You’re……...welcome.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	34. "Apology-" Tavra/Onica

Onica walks slowly away from the dying fire, her mind an impossible swirl of emotions that steal the words from her mouth. She cradles the little creature in her hands as though it’s a precious thing made of glass, and in a way it is. She still doesn’t quite believe it.

“I’m sorry,” comes Tavra’s voice. It would seem ghostly if she didn’t know where it was coming from. In a way, it still does- it’s a voice she never thought she would hear again.

She sits against a tree, letting the tiny body housing Tavra’s soul crawl onto her knee. “Why?”

It is impossible to discern an expression on its face in the dark, but it shrinks and curls in on itself, and the voice is full of regret. “I promised to come back to you.”

For a moment, Onica is silent. There is so much she could say- how her far-dreams had turned dark and dreadful and left her trembling when she returned to the present. How her heart had slowly dropped as she had wandered through the raucous celebration after the Skeksis’ defeat, searching, still clinging to hope even as it had slipped away. How it had broken, when Seladon had taken her aside with pity and guilt in her eyes and confirmed her fears.

So much is uncertain. She still may never see Tavra’s face- at least the one she remembers- again. They may be like this for the rest of their lives.

It doesn’t matter.

She shakes her head. When she speaks, it is barely a whisper, rough with the beginnings of tears.

“You came back to me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	35. "Long Time Coming"- Mira/Rian

Rian is hopeless.

She catches him looking at her anytime he thinks she can’t see it- between bites in the mess hall or sips of spiced wine pilfered from the kitchens, even when they turn away to return to their separate barracks. At first she rolls her eyes and tries to ignore it- she’s here to be a soldier, after all, even if she finds it more tedious than she’d ever admit aloud. (She had joined to get away from home and see the world, not realizing that the castle would feel in some ways even smaller than her home village.) But he’s too charming to ignore for long, despite his perhaps misplaced confidence in his skills as the captain’s son, and they end up fast friends, partners in mischief, glued to each other’s side as often as their patrols will allow.

The next step feels inevitable, but all he seems to be willing- or perhaps able- to do is _look_.

He’s even looking at her now, as she blocks his blade and throws him back, laughing wildly. Just a spar to keep in shape, beneath clear skies and the light of the great sun. They do this often, but he’s off his game today, face red despite the exertion being too little to tire him out yet.

“You got lucky on that one!” he calls, and she grins.

“I’d say you were the lucky one to even get that close to landing a hit!” He growls and charges and they’re off again.

She lets herself stop thinking then, falling into the rhythm of the fight, the clash of their bodies and the sound of their breathing. He’s doing his best, truly, but her wings give her the edge, and in the end she has him pinned, panting, his hair fanned out dark and messy on the stone floor.

“Alright alright, you win.” He laughs softly, but he’s still just _looking_ , and at that moment she knows that if she wants something done, she’ll have to do it herself. Smirking, she throws caution to the wind and leans down.

She can’t help but laugh inside at how eagerly he kisses back.

_About damn time._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	36. "Message"- Kira, ???

Kira runs her fingers over the tree bark, tracing the edge of the hole. It seems so small, and it’s strange to imagine that she could have once been tiny enough to fit inside it. She hadn’t ever intended to come looking for this place- any significance it might have held, any remnant of her mother’s touch, has surely been long washed away by time. It’s just a tree. Still, here she is, drawn by the familiarity of faint memories, staring at it as though it might hold some answers.

She expects none, and prepares to turn away, when she catches sight of a dim shape in the back of the hollow.

It’s a seed, round and smooth. Perhaps, she thinks, this has become the hoard of some animal in preparation for the cold, though it has done poorly to only collect a single nut. There’s no reason to touch it, save curiosity. But Kira is a curious creature, and when she wraps her hand around it, she feels the unmistakable thrum of life, the hum of the Song.

_ A dreamfast? _

A voice echoes through her mind, low and gentle, the imprint of a memory.

_ “Kira.” _ It knows her name, somehow.  _ “I have no idea if you’ll ever find this.” _ It lets out a self-deprecating chuckle. _ “I doubt I’ll be around if you do. It’s already strange to be- well, one of the last. But if you do…I want you to know that your parents loved you. Your aunt did too, after they were gone. They didn’t want to leave you. And I...I loved all of them, very much. They shouldn’t be forgotten, and I’m afraid we all will be.”  _ The voice pauses, as though collecting itself. She wonders who it once belonged to.  _ “I hope what I’ve dreamstitched here will be enough to keep their memories alive, at least for you.” _

She stands silent for a moment, stunned, apprehensive. But the object in her hand is warm, glowing softly, breathing the way the forest breathes, alive with the echo of life held within it. It has more to say, more to show. She closes her eyes.

“Please...tell me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	37. "Hot Chocolate"- Gurjin/Seladon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One from the festive prompts list! Do they have chocolate on Thra? Who knows. Do I ship this? Also debatable. But it was fun to write XD

Balancing two steaming bowls, Seladon makes her way to the pile of braids and blankets seated at the edge of their camp. The bite of the mountain air feels like home, the way her clouded breath floats in front of her comfortingly familiar, but many of the gelfling from other clans are visibly struggling in the cold. Most of them are asleep now, but someone has to keep watch.

Gurjin turns when she sits down beside him and gratefully accepts the bowl, taking a sip before he says anything. He pulls a face for a moment- from the sweetness, she realizes, as the Vapra are perhaps alone in their enjoyment of excessive sugar- but still takes another sip.

“Aren’t you freezing?” he asks. He really does look like a heap of swamp-moss so bundled up compared with her light, fur-lined coat, and she laughs softly.

“No. I’ve lived my entire life here. Vaprans are used to the cold.” She raises her own bowl to her lips- the warmth is welcome despite her claim. “Don’t worry, I’m sure I would feel just as out of place in your home.”

He glances over at her, raising a brow. “You were once, when your mother came down to meet with mine. Don’t you remember?”

It takes her a moment, but she does. She had been so small then, and her sisters even smaller- Brea had still been a baby strapped to her mother’s back while she worked. She remembers stomping around in the knee-deep swampy muck, crying when she had lost her shoe in the mud. Splashing around with the other children, until her mother had called her inside and admonished her and Tavra for making messes of themselves.

“Y-yes, I remember. It was certainly...different.”

Gurjin laughs. “You know, we Drenchen value straight talk over what you’d call diplomacy.” His smile is soft, unbothered. “You can say that you hated it.”

Her cheeks are burning now, but she may as well be honest. “Alright, maybe a little.” She appraises his features for a silent moment- so different from her own, yet still fundamentally gelfling.  _ Not as different as she had been told for so long. _ And not unappealing either, though she immediately shoves that thought away. “I envied you and your sisters, though, whenever we met. You were still the children of a maudra, but your lives seemed very different. Like you had more freedom to...well, to be children.”

Gurjin looks taken aback. “Is that so? I always just thought that you thought you were better than us.”

He certainly wasn’t kidding about straight talk, but after so many lies, she finds it oddly refreshing. “I...maybe I did.” It was all so complicated, and so ultimately pointless to try to unravel now. Her eyes are fixed on the steam rising from her drink, but she forces them to meet his instead. “I was wrong about so many things,” she whispers, swallowing down the shame. There is no use for it now. “I hope you can forgive me.”

He chuckles again, and the motion brushes his shoulder against hers. “You came around. Don’t worry, I’m not the type to hold a grudge.”

They fall into silence then, watching the sky for the first sign of the great sun peeking up over the horizon. The cold still doesn’t bother her, but when she feels his arm come to rest around her shoulders, she leans into it, just a bit. She wouldn’t want him to freeze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	38. "Flowing Water," "Borrowed Time"- urVa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Combined two prompts into one for this one, because why not

He stops for the evening when his joints begin to ache- he has wandered all his life, but not on a journey with such purpose in hundreds of trine. This, perhaps, is _the_ purpose of his long existence, if such prophecies and predictions are to be believed. The other mystics put great stock in them- Aughra less so, if only because she can see the way that they weave and split into infinite possibilities. UrVa has never been one to look so far ahead- he tells himself that it is better to focus on appreciating the now, on existing harmoniously with the nature he has come to respect and love.

Perhaps he also fears what he might see.

He dips his wrinkled hands in the frigid stream, cupping the water and letting it flow down the carven spirals of his face to wash away the dust of the road. The rush of it is gentle but unyielding, skipping over soil and stones, branching across the land as the paths of destiny do before merging into the greater rivers and eventually reaching the vastness of the sea.

It feels, in a way, like he himself, walking inexorably toward the end of his mortal life- and, he hopes, toward the merging of his soul with the rich sea of life and memory around him.

It is impossible to know if that may come. He does not fear the alternative, as his other half does, but perhaps it is not blasphemous to hope.

Either way, he will find out tomorrow. He dips his hand in the water again, concentrating on the flow of the current, the sounds of a thousand little creatures going about their lives, the soft whistle of the wind. He can never touch the same droplet of water twice- they slip through his fingers like the stream of moments that have made up his time in this world. They seem more precious now that it is reaching its end- perhaps he still has not appreciated them enough. He will not let these final hours go to waste.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	39. "Supply and Demand"- skekTek, skekSo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of backstory for the current big WIP

The Emperor has never had any qualms about barging into the Scientist’s lab, but his footfalls and slamming of the door lack the strength they once had. SkekTek courteously says nothing of that- the last time he had offered anything but essence to boost vitality, he had received still-powerful fingers wrapped around his throat, and the essence has been short for over a trine now. The loss of that first battle has all but trapped them here- no tithes, no trade, no gelfling foolish enough to come near the castle. After enough of a taste of such a miracle to crave it, they are growing desperate, and quickly.

Still, if nothing else, the Scientist’s work is thriving- and finally getting the respect it deserves, now that the others realize he is their best chance at survival. (Not having the General around to belittle him constantly has helped too, but it would likely attract the Emperor’s wrath to be too gleeful about that.) Desperation breeds innovation, after all, and the room is overflowing with new and fascinating creations- jars of sickly yellow fluid with lumps of flesh suspended in them, pulsating, living,  _ growing _ . They hadn’t thought that he could do it. They were wrong.

The Emperor runs a finger down the smooth surface of one of the jars, and skekTek struggles not to cringe at the smell of rot clinging to his robes, somehow distinguishable even amid the ever-present stink of chemicals and old, acrid blood. He does not have to ask how the progress fares- skekTek already knows the near-daily question.

“The growth continues well, my Emperor!” he exclaims, failing not to sound too proud. “I have synthesized enough tissue for three more, provided we have the arathim required for assembly.”

“How long?” the Emperor croaks, uninterested as always in the details.

A pained gurgle comes from the far corner of the lab, and skekTek clicks his tongue in annoyance- the creature has spent so long full of sedatives that it has begun to grow immune and to wake at the least opportune moments. The Scientist usually delights in the myriad sounds pain can wring from a creature under his knife, but too much of it can stop a heart, and dead flesh is no good to him. This creature is precious- the very last one after the two he had thoughtlessly slaughtered, dug out of some obscure hideaway by skekSil after unum of searching. He needs it alive, tied down securely, available whenever he needs another sample to begin a new growth.

After all, one cannot make something from nothing.

“Soon, Sire...soon.” It is a less than specific answer, but then, skekSo has been less than specific about how many garthim will be enough. He ventures a familiar proposal. “These new garthim will make seven- perhaps if we send out just a few, they could bring back enough gelfling to-

“ _ No! _ ” the Emperor snaps, banging a fist on the table, with barely enough force to rattle the glass containers. The exertion still seems to have quickened his breath. “We cannot afford to lose any, or to give the gelfling time to learn how to destroy them. We wait….until the time is right.” He turns on his heel and looks back over his shoulder, sunken eyes burning. “We will crush them in a single blow.”

_ If we survive that long _ , the Scientist thinks, but keeps such musings to himself. He fills a syringe with more sedative, ignoring the rising pitch of the creature’s cries as it sees him coming with the needle.

He will have peace and quiet again soon. There is always more work to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	40. "Mirror Image"- skekGra/urGoh

When skekGra swims back to hazy, nauseated consciousness, his first and only thought is that he needs to find urGoh. He wobbles to his feet, ignoring the protests of the Drenchen healer fussing over him. The Resistance camp is small, a mere cluster of tents hidden among the trees, patrolled by gelfling who leap out of his way as he finally tears open the right one and all but falls into urGoh’s arms.

_ Arms, at least he still has three, at least he’s not- _

_ “I’m sorry-”  _ he gasps, clinging like his life depends on it.  _ “I’m sorry, I messed up, I let my guard down, I let us get-” _

UrGoh silences him with a gentle hand around his beak, and skekGra chokes back a sob. They had talked a thousand times about whether he should go into battle, whether he could be of any use, whether it was worth the risks.  _ Was it?  _ The garthim are gone, the Resistance safe another day. If it were only him, skekGra would say so in a heartbeat.

_ But it isn’t. _

He runs his remaining hand down urGoh’s front right arm, gingerly cupping where it ends in a bandaged stump just above the elbow and shrinking under another wave of self-loathing.  _ If he’d just moved a fraction sooner- _

“It’s…..a little high…….for a hook…” urGoh muses, and skekGra laughs wetly, knowing it means urGoh holds no anger towards him.  _ Whatever it takes _ , they had said, and damn it all, they meant it. They sat on the sidelines for long enough.

There is no talk of when-  _ if _ \- skekGra will fight again. Not tonight. They simply curl together, pressed close, tandem heartbeats reminding them that whatever might be missing, they are still alive for one more day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	41. "All That I Have"- Brea, Kira

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More WIP backstory!

Brea never had any plans to be a mother- and she still isn’t, in the traditional sense- but if there’s one thing that she knows, it’s that she can learn anything she sets her mind to if she tries. So she learns, feeds her jars of Nebrie milk warmed to the right temperature in her vest, keeps her strapped to her chest during strategy meetings, plays with her and blinks back tears at the sound of that little giggle, so oblivious to how much they’ve both lost.

There are moments, when the stress and exhaustion have burrowed their way into her brain, when she resents them. Resents her sister for getting herself captured not two unum after giving life to her daughter, resents Rian for going after Deet and leaving the Resistance on her shoulders, resents the whole world for going to hell right at the moment she might have truly begun her life. But they never last. Above all else, Brea values _truth_ , and the truth is that none of this is their fault, or hers. It simply _is_ , and all they can do is keep fighting because there’s no other choice.

 _Kira._ Seladon had at least had time to gift her a name, even if she’ll never remember the sound of it in her true mother’s voice. She has the same pale gossamer hair and honey eyes of the people Brea misses most, and Brea never quite knows what to say to her. _“I won’t let anything happen to you,”_ she sometimes chooses, but not too often- she values truth, after all, and there are some things she knows she cannot truly promise. _“Your mother loved you._ **_I_ ** _love you.”_ That one hurts, but comes easily, because it is the truth.

 _“You’ll carry the future of the gelfling in your hands someday,”_ she thinks once but _never_ says aloud, because she has seen all too well the grief that the weight of impossible expectations can bring.

Most often she says nothing, instead humming her to sleep with songs that her mother used to sing to her. Songs of their people, that she hopes Kira will someday remember, even if Brea is no longer around to sing them. Those, at least, she can entrust her to carry.

Someday, Thra willing, they’ll revisit them together, and Brea will be able to tell her about the family who still love her, even from within the Song. Until then, she will do all she can to ensure Kira makes it there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	42. "Blood Sacrifice" (but only fluff allowed)- Seladon, Tavra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We joked that we were gonna only allow ourselves to write fluff to the angstiest prompt possible since we're normally all monsters, but then we actually did it xD

Seladon lets out a word not befitting a princess as she stabs her finger for at least the fifth time. She has had lessons in everything, sewing included- the Vapra take their image as the most _cultured_ quite seriously- but that does not mean she is anywhere near mastery. Nor that she enjoys something so tedious, frankly. Still, she owes a gift of thanks to the daughter of the Spriton maudra, and gelfling consider nothing as valuable as the work of one’s own hands. That might make sense for some homebody putting love into every stitch, but as she is constantly reminded, what matters for royalty is maintaining a certain impression- the love may not be there, for the gift or its recipient, but she’ll just have to pretend.

As she unceremoniously sticks the finger in her mouth to stop the bleeding, she hears a whistle from behind her.

“Such _language_!” Tavra admonishes in a perfect imitation of a tutor neither of them can stand. She looks casual and comfortable in her light training armor, blunted sword resting on her hip. Seladon rolls her eyes.

“You could always come help me, if you’d like to make it easier.” Tavra snorts, grinning playfully.

“Absolutely not. I have bigger things to stab.” She plops onto the bench beside Seladon, smelling of sweat and the yard and the freedom her older sister lacks. “Besides, you do not want my help.” That is certainly true- there was a reason she had been excused from that particular lesson so quickly. “You could always get Brea to finish it,” she adds, grin widening.

“Brea would put her eye out.” Seladon shakes her head, but can’t quite suppress a chuckle at the thought. Little, impossible Brea, too small to hold a needle anyways. She will likely never have the patience for this. She glances back down at the project, and lets out another curse at a spot of blood near the petal of one of the delicately stitched flowers. Tavra is still laughing, and Seladon elbows her in the ribs.

“Hey!” she protests. “Come on, it’s not so bad. They say you haven’t truly created something until you’ve bled on it a bit.”

Seladon rubs her forehead. “Great, a sacrifice to Thra for my embroidery. It doesn’t fit the aesthetic quite as well as it does on your straw dummy.”

Tavra shrugs. “Put another flower over it. No one will know.”

 _Another flower. Another hour, at this rate._ Seladon sighs. “I suppose I’ll have to.” She pauses, contemplating a rare request these days. “...Will you at least keep me company in my suffering?”

Tavra blinks in surprise, and for a moment Seladon thinks she might decline and return to her training. But instead she leans back on her elbows, settling in more comfortably, and her smile softens. “...Sure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	43. "Compromise Between Enemies"- Rek'yr, skekMal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for...skekMal being skekMal, I guess xD

Rek’yr attempts to empty his mind in meditation, but every sound cuts into his consciousness like the knife that made it flays open the creature’s flesh, thankfully silencing its excruciating whimpers quickly. The scent of the bowl of incense burning beside his knee is a familiar comfort, but it cannot overpower the thick smell of blood.

He was brash and foolish, he realizes now, and he understands better the strange look his maudra had given him when he had accepted the request so readily.

They had spoken little as they stalked the beast, separated from its pack and chased into the sands. The Hunter is an enigma to most gelfling- a mythical bogeyman whispered about in hushed tones in the dark- but such tales are often exaggerated, and the creature ripping into the great carcass mere feet from him feels little more than animal itself. SkekMal must be unaccustomed to company in his pursuits, but even he knows better than to try to traverse the shifting dunes alone. The silence suits Rek’yr just fine.

As if to spite that thought, his fragile peace is broken by the wet slap of a hunk of meat landing on the stone in front of him. He is glad he has seen enough of the less savory parts of the natural cycle in his short time as a sandmaster to keep his calm. Five trine ago he might have retched.

“Eat,” skekMal growls. It does not sound as threatening as he might have expected, but it also does not sound like a request.

Still, he shakes his head. “Thank you, but no. It is not the custom of my people to eat the flesh of a creature slaughtered before its natural end.”

SkekMal rolls his eyes. “Doesn’t have to be raw.” The sheen of blood and juices on his claws makes his own preference clear. “‘S your fair share.”

Rek’yr suspects he is meant to see this as an honor- a share in the prize, for his hard work. His prize will be never having to see something like this again.

He chooses his words carefully. “I have kept your feet above the sand. I hope that is enough.”

For a moment, the Hunter’s eyes glint the same way they had when he had spotted his prey across the sands, and Rek’yr fears he has made a fatal mistake. But it passes quickly, and the carrion-bird shrugs a shoulder. “Suit yourself.” After one more moment of charged silence, they turn their separate ways- the Hunter to his bloody meal, and Rek’yr to his restless attempt at meditation. 

Home cannot come soon enough. He will not make this mistake again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	44. "Second Thoughts"- Rian/Deet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more backstory drabbles for my other fic, which I can actually link to now that it's started being uploaded xD- https://archiveofourown.org/works/28862913/chapters/70802448

The sight of the great mouth of the back entrance to the catacombs makes him freeze for a moment, just as imposing as it had seemed when he was a child- perhaps moreso, now that he is older and better understands the gravity of danger. Its shape is appropriate- the prospect of this plan feels like walking willingly into the jaws of a monster, but they have no other choice. Where they are- scattered, overwhelmed,  _ terrified _ \- is unsustainable. They will not last- they need to end this now.

He shakes his head to clear it- he cannot afford this hesitation. Gurjin and Naia have only bought them so much time with this entrance unguarded. He has almost worked up the nerve to move forward when a hand catches his arm.

“Are you...sure?” Deet asks, not for the first time. The Darkening has left its scars on her even after its release, pale lines snaking across her skin like arathim’s webs, a film of white obscuring the deep wells of her eyes. It has marked her in other ways too- in the way she trails off and struggles for words, in how quickly she tires, in the fitful way she sleeps in his arms at night. It is a miracle it didn’t do worse, and confirms what he has always suspected- that despite her soft heart, she is more resilient than any of them. She is still so beautiful he can hardly stand it, and to be able to touch her again is worth everything they have been through. And if he can heal the Crystal and their world, perhaps she can begin to heal as well.

He isn’t sure about any of this, but that thought gives him the courage he needs. The shard is heavy in his pocket, and the weight of this task even greater. He nods and leans in, kissing her scarred forehead, then her lips. “I’ll be alright,” he murmurs with more certainty than he feels. Recalling his words from what feels like another time, he smiles. “It will be better. Soon. I promise.”

That makes her smile, and he holds onto it like a ray of sunshine as he descends into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	45. "Immortal Love"- skekGra/urGoh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was written for an NSFW write-in, but I realized it's really not NSFW at all, so there's no reason it can't go here. Warnings for pillow talk/cuddling I guess XD
> 
> (Would anyone be interested in reading those? XD I've considered making a separate collection)

“Do you ever tire of me?” 

The question comes after they have drifted back to Thra, murmured into urGoh’s sweaty skin where skekGra’s beak is tucked into the juncture of neck and shoulder. Often, he treasures this time more than what comes before it- all the bickering and manic energy drained away, free to simply let his hands roam and map the shapes of bone and flesh that house the other half of his soul.

UrGoh raises his head as much as he can with most of a Skeksis draped over him. “Why….would...I?” He strokes the side of skekGra’s face, tracing bumps and grooves and the sparse remnants of what were once feathers. His stomach drops with nonsensical worry, and he adds, “Do you…….tire….of me?”

“No!” skekGra shrieks, too loud for the softness of the moment, but so typical that urGoh can’t help but smile. “Of course not. Except when I’m waiting for you to catch up to me.” He’s grinning now, and urGoh elbows him in the ribs in a way that seems to punch the giggling out of him. This is better than melancholy questions- how could he tire of such easy joy and laughter, joy that he had found nowhere else on Thra, and never would again if they were parted. Still, as the room falls quiet again, he finds skekGra’s eyes trained on their hands, thinning skin shriveled over jutting knuckles, and thinks he understands what brought on such a question.

_ The mortal flesh in which we live will not last forever _ , had been the implication.  _ Reunification is a dream- one that perhaps we will never see. _

_ Do you still wish to spend the days we have remaining with me? _

“I tire…...of this place…..sometimes,” he admits softly, tangling a leg with skekGra’s, letting his aching neck fall back to the pillows. He rarely admits it aloud, but it is no secret, nor his sentiment alone. “There was…...much more….of Thra….to see.” He laces their fingers together. “But never…….of you.” They could have seen it together- he is not the type to assign blame or hold a grudge, but he will never quite forgive the Skeksis for denying them that. But there is no point dwelling on what might have been. “I am….happy…….with what...we have.”

SkekGra nods, his head on urGoh’s chest heavy, mumbling from the beginnings of peaceful sleep. “...Okay.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	46. "Dancing Lights"- Fara, Vala

Most days, Vala rules with little Fara on one hip- while she is still small enough to carry. It isn’t overprotectiveness, per se- though Fara has a vexing knack for slipping her caregivers and getting into all sorts of mischief. It’s just that there is so much to teach her only daughter, and she can already feel it slipping faster and faster- little tangle-haired Fara, already walking and running and chattering when it seems like yesterday she was still a babe. It feels like Vala will blink and she’ll be grown and left to lead their clan alone.

“Ah-ah, look but don’t touch,” she chides, disentangling those chubby little fingers from the rope net holding the jars of firebugs. It’s useless- Fara can’t help but touch everything- but the last thing they need is to pull the whole thing down on their heads. She lifts out a single jar and sets it in Fara’s hands, wrapping her own around them to support it.

“Are they happy in there?” Fara asks with a frown staring intently at the creature floating placidly in the glass orb, occasionally bumping the side. It takes Vala a moment to answer.

“I like to think so.” She supposes she doesn’t really know- doesn’t really even know if they can feel happiness. They are part of Thra, and the gelfling care for them well, but it has never occurred to her to wonder if they have any sort of unfulfilled higher calling. “We feed them nectar from the flowers, and in return they provide us with light. We help each other.”

Fara looks unconvinced, her frown deepening in the firebug’s flickering glow. “I guess. I wouldn’t want to live in a jar.”

There is another lesson here- the lesson that sometimes you have a duty and purpose to fulfil whether it makes you happy or not- but that one she saves for another day, or perhaps another trine. There is also something to be said for the compassion to care for something others see as a mere tool, and perhaps that is more important. That is what will someday make her great.

Chuckling, she plants a kiss on Fara’s messy head. “No, I don’t suppose you would. Now come on, how would you like to stretch your wings a bit before supper?” Fara’s excited cry is all the answer she needs, and she heads for the door, leaving the throne room and its twinkling glow behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	47. "Running on Empty"- Naia, Gurjin

Naia’s fingers clutch tight to the nearest vine of the apeknot tree- not quite tapping into it in a dreamfast, just feeling the thrum of yet-untainted life within it as she wills herself to stay awake. Constant alertness is a must- they are not safe here as they were before those  _ things _ appeared. Still, she feels more protected here than out in the open grasslands, but perhaps that is just an illusion borne of familiarity and comfort. It will not do to grow complacent.

She is so absorbed in forcing herself to remain vigilant that she doesn’t notice the footsteps until a hand comes to rest on her shoulder.

“Damn you, Gurjin,” she sighs after the startle response calms. He’s lucky she didn’t pull her knife. “What do you want?”

“Who says I always want something?” he replies too-smoothly, but she can feel the strain of stress beneath their usual easy banter. He frowns. “This is your fourth night in a row on watch.”

“I suppose the Three Sisters are better company than one brother,” she says flatly, but he doesn’t laugh.

“You don’t have to do everything Naia,” he says, and her lips pinch into a flat line at how perfectly on the mark he’s hit. He knows her too well. “You’ve been barely holding yourself up all day, not to mention chewing all our heads off.” She considers objecting to that, but he’s already continuing, voice hushed, the worry plain to read on his face. “We’re going to need you if we have to fight. I’m not going to let something happen to you just because we let you take one for the team night after night.”

“I’m not doing this because any of you asked me to,” she retorts, but she can feel her knees wobbling against her will.

Gurjin rolls his eyes. “No, you’re doing it because you don’t trust any of us to do something you can just do yourself.”

This time he’s wrong. It isn’t that she doesn’t trust them- many of her companions have proved more than capable. But to take her eyes off the trees is to allow for possibilities that she cannot see coming, cannot  _ stop _ . If something is going to come for them in the night, she wants herself between it and the people she loves. But Gurjin is right- she’s no good if she can barely lift her spear.

“I’ve got this,” he murmurs, almost pleading. “Go to sleep.”

She doesn’t quite pull him into an embrace- that may well bring more emotion welling up than she cares to let free- but she reaches out and clasps his hand. Another comfort, one whose jutting bones and fingerprints she knows as well as the bark of the trees around them. She will have to trust him, and hope he is there to grin and say _ see, I told you it would be fine _ in the morning. She nods, squeezes his hand, then lets it drop and turns back to their camp. 

“...Thanks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	48. "Flight" and "Remembrance"- Brea, Kira

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Eleventh Hour-verse, because I love baby Kira and auntie Brea a lot

Brea keeps a mental catalogue- always changing, and too often shrinking- of places on Thra that the garthim cannot reach them, places where it is possible to stand still and unafraid and simply breathe. The small, barren islands dotting the turbulent waters off the Sifan coast are little more than rocks, unsuited to life, yet precious for the freedom they provide. The salt-air smells of summers spent digging her fingers into the sand searching for shells to match to the drawings in a book, and she tightens her arms around the stirring bundle strapped to her chest, tamping down the dull, well-trod grief that she may never know such happy times. 

With another deep breath, she unfurls her gossamer wings in the sunlight and feels her feet lift from the ground.

The Vapra have many traditions, but the first flight is an informal one- merely something passed fondly from mother to child. The Vapra love the air more than any other clan, after all, and it would not do for one of their own to fear it. So they introduce it slowly, so by the time their daughters’ wings begin to bloom, they have grown to yearn for it. Some credit it as their earliest memory, though such things are more accessible within a dreamfast than through conscious thought. It is a moment of celebration, of bonding, of the family.

This should not have been Brea’s to pass on- especially alone- but it will have to be.

She kisses Kira’s downy forehead, and smiles at the wonder in her wide, amber eyes. It may well be that the only safety she will ever know is in the air, but in her more optimistic moments, Brea hopes for better for her. She hopes that someday she will know the exhilaration of flying as gelfling are meant to- chasing birds, grasping at clouds, laughing as Brea and her sisters once had. She hopes that someday Kira can carry her own child into the sky and look down upon a peaceful, green world. She hopes for so, so many things.

Whatever is to come, if nothing else, she hopes that Kira remembers this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	49. "Dark and Dangerous" and "Stay"- Rian/Deet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Eleventh Hour-verse (honestly just assume a lot of my gelf drabbles are at this point, since we just don't get to spend enough time with them in that fic since they're not the focus and so much has happened before it started). Warning for more pillow talk, I guess XD

This place should feel like home, Rian thinks. After all, it once was- he knows every wall, every stone, every tree. But a silent town and ashen-cold forge are not Stone-in-the-wood, and the only thing that feels like home is curled beneath the blankets beside him.

The moss-green expanse of her skin glows gold in the light of the only firebug-lamp he dares risk, fading the pale scars carved by the Darkening until he can nearly forget them, at least for tonight. Her wings are draped, translucent and shimmering, over the edge of the bed, and her unbraided hair is hopelessly tangled and flyaway, soft and white as a cloud around her peaceful face. The smile on her lips is the one that he had tried to picture whenever he had nearly given up hope of bringing her back.

This isn’t how he had wanted her to see the home in which he spent his childhood. There had been no anxious dreams of formally announcing a courtship to his father as he had once had about Mira- he had already lost and mourned them both before the first feelings for Deet had wormed their way unbidden into his heart. But they could have had a life here, at least for a time, if not for what she had to sacrifice to buy them that time and win their first victory. She could have lent her many Grottan tricks to the rebuilding of Stone-in-the-Wood, visited the Cradle Tree, joined their two clans together. They even could have had a family of their own, though perhaps it would have been too cruel to bring childlings into this world, seeing what it has now become in only a few short trine. And what manner of father would he have been, with so much of the weight of the Resistance on his shoulders? He knows all too well the precarious balance between being a warrior and a parent. Could he have maintained it better than his own father, or would he have failed at both?

He puts such questions aside, to be picked up again should they ever see happier days. For now they have one night, before they set back out on the road. They are too close to the castle to linger.

The telltale clicking of the garthim is blessedly absent tonight, but Rian has been burned too many times now to take silence to mean safety. A walk around the perimeter of the village will be quick. He tries to slip on his tunic and grab his knife as quietly as possible, but he has never been a very effective sneak, and a hand wraps around his wrist as he makes to stand.   
  
“Do you have to go?” Her eyes are open now, deep pools of black in the low light. He begins to say  _ yes, he has to _ , but stops himself. They are not alone here tonight. He would trust his friends with his life, and now he has to trust them to give him this one night in peace, even if Gurjin will surely rib him mercilessly come morning. He sets the knife back on the bedside table, and leans down to capture that undimmed smile in a kiss.   
  
“No. I’ll stay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	50. "Reputation"- urGoh, urSu

UrGoh is more perceptive than most give him credit for. He knows that the other urRu consider him something of an oddity. Still, however far he roams, he always returns to the familiarity of the valley, laden with treasures, stories, memories. Nothing the Skeksis would consider treasures, certainly- those no more little interest for him than any of his kind- but gifts, made by affectionate hands, notes in letters he can barely read, painted bark, dried flowers. Today, a paste of herbs carefully mixed to heal the sore feet after a long day’s walk, and a little doll stitched from fabric scraps and stuffed with dry grass, pressed into his hands by a childling who had been sad to see him go. It had been a plea not to forget her, but he never does.

The days move slower in the valley than in the outside world, and in a way that is comforting. He slips back into the daily rituals easily, joins his voice and his hands with the others, allows himself to rest with the awareness that this visit, like all the others, will be finite. The others humor him kindly as he pours out his tales, but rarely stop their own work, and their eyes are always distant, any interest superficial at best. They are not their darker halves- they see value in life in the abstract- but have sunk too deep into their own self-reflection to appreciate it in the individual sense. He has long since given up on changing them, but he shares anyway.

UrSu takes him aside late one night, when the moons are high and the air is alive with the distant chirps and calls of the forest’s creatures. The restlessness has begun to set in already, the pull to walk among all that life and beauty again. The Master meets his eyes, mostly inscrutable, but with his ever-present, heavy air of sadness.

“You love the world too much,” he says, slow but pointed. “It is not our world. We merely linger in it while its true inhabitants pass through.” He pauses, long even for him, traces long fingers over urGoh’s knuckles. “To love them is to lose them.”

His motives are obvious- to spare pain to one of his own, to tempt him back to the valley’s gentle numbness. But UrGoh already knows this, perhaps better than any of them. Time is different within him than outside too, and all too often he has returned to a village, only to find its childlings from his last visit frail and withered, or returned already to Thra. They remain, their descendents tell him, in the ground and the rock and the trees, but urGoh is an outsider- if their voices can still be heard, he cannot hear them. Their time with him is merely a blink. But that does not make them insignificant. “That is….my choice.”

UrSu sighs, but nods.

The next morning, the Wanderer shoulders his pack and sets out again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	51. "The Moments Between"- Brea, Gurjin, Kylan, Naia

Brea blinks in surprise as a leather ball sails across the page she is reading and lands in her lap. She looks up to find Gurjin in the doorway of the borrowed Spriton hut, a lazy grin on his face that she rarely sees these days. 

“Where did you find this?” she asks, turning the ball over in her hands, finding the trademark scuffs and stains of a well-loved toy.

“Out in the grass,” he answers. She cannot help but wonder if it was merely lost during a game or dropped as some child was snatched up, never to be seen again, but their lives have become dictated by pragmatism too much to dwell on it. Food is food, shelter is shelter, a ball is a ball. “Come on,” he says, uncharacteristically soft. “The book will be there later. Take a break.”

She opens her mouth to protest- there is no guarantee of that, they could be raided again tonight, and she hasn’t seen a new book in weeks- but she knows him well enough now to know that he’s unlikely to leave her to her solitude. She glances over at the basket in which she’s nestled Kira, but she is sound asleep, tiny fingers curled into the blanket. Brea shakes her head, chuckles. “Alright. Just until she wakes up.”

Sami Thicket is quiet compared with her foggy memories of it from visits as a child, but not the abandoned ruin her own home has become- not yet. Naia leans against a tree trunk, arms crossed, and Kylan offers her a warm smile as she emerges. “I’m glad you joined us.”

She raises a brow and tosses the ball to him. “I didn’t take you for the sporting type,” she teases. The air of normalcy about them feels somehow wrong, but for once she tries to put the constant stream of worries aside and just  _ breathe. _   
  
He fumbles the catch a little, laughing. “Trust me, I’m not. But this is a Spriton game, so I’d say being the only one to know the rules gives me an advantage.”

Naia barks out a laugh in return. “We’ll see if it holds once you explain them.”

“Careful,” Gurjin calls, “or we’ll make you a team by yourself and see how well you do!”

Naia grins, the playful rivalry obvious. “Go ahead! It will be all the more embarrassing when I still win.”

Brea glances at the ground, at the plants already beginning to show signs of decay, at the footprints of gelfling whose fates are now unknown. Any joy they can find today could be gone tomorrow. There is no point in being half-present and allowing it to slip away even sooner. She takes another deep breath, and lets herself smile with them. “Alright, Kylan. How do we play?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	52. "Celebration"- skekGra, skekVar

“SkekGra! What are you doing moping in a corner?” SkekVar slaps him- jovially and much too hard- on the back, sloshing wine into his lap. “The Conqueror should celebrate his own victory!”

_ He should, shouldn’t he. _ SkekNa has threatened a troupe of Podling into playing for them until their fingers bleed- which the Slave-Master enjoys as much as the music- and the table is piled with delicacies from grateful gelfling. SkekUng is even drunk enough to crack a smile.

It should be nothing, clearing out more Arathim. He’s done it a thousand times But he can’t get last night’s muddled dream out of his mind. And he can’t focus on the new land they gained when the smell of blood sticks to his hands no matter how hard he scrubs.

_ This feels... _ **_wrong_ ** _. _

He gulps down the remaining wine to drown that thought and forces a laugh. “Right. I’m coming.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


	53. "Snap Judgement"- Rian, Gurjin

The guards’ barracks are nearly empty the first time Rian creaks the door open, the pack holding all his belongings slung awkwardly across his back. The only figure inside sits facing away from him at a desk along the wall, obscured by a wild mass of locs. For a moment he frowns, and a hundred less than appealing rumors about the swamp-folk run through his mind, but he shakes his head.  _ You’re better than that, Rian. Most of the clans can be guards, you’re going to have to get used to gelfling who don’t look like you. _

He opens his mouth to introduce himself, or perhaps to blurt out some idiotic question-  _ do you really have gills? how do you wash hair like that? is it true you eat swamp crawlies? _ \- but he never makes it that far.

“Think fast!” the Drenchen calls, and before Rian can do anything of the sort, he just barely manages to catch a vibrant red fruit sailing at his face before it can hit him. It still squirts juice all over his hand when he squeezes it too hard, and he can hear the Drenchen boy laughing. He looks up to find a warm, open smile, tinged with embarrassment. “ _ Thra _ , sorry, I- I thought you were someone else.” He holds up another fruit- from a stash in the desk drawer, apparently- and shrugs sheepishly. “Uhh….snack?”

Rian can’t help but laugh too. He has a sneaking suspicion they’ll get along just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know what you enjoy and what you want to see more of! <3


End file.
